Kinda shy for a Jedi.

Well…that wasn’t exactly true. But it was maybe two-percent true. Perhaps even a generous three. Our first couple months of marriage had been fine, for the most part…but certain aspects had been more difficult than others, and it was those I’d been happy to escape.

Still, I hadn’t seen her in-person in a quarter of a year, and we’d been apart longer than we’d been together since we’d gotten married. I was excited to see her again.

Though, as I was about to discover, nowhere near as excited as she was.

I spotted my mom’s speeder coming down the lane, and picked up my suitcase to meet it at the curb. Much to my surprise, Fan was sitting in the driver’s seat, and she was by herself.

Holy crap. She drove here? If we get pulled over, she’s gonna get arrested again.

I pulled open the passenger door.

“The heck’re you doing?!” I hissed. “This isn’t the Outer Rim, kid, you can’t just go out for a spin—you don’t have a license! Where’s Mom?”

“She’s at home,” Fannie said, smiling so big she looked like she was glowing. “And about my license—I beg to differ!” She pulled a duraplast card from her pocket.

“Gimme that,” I said, taking it.

Whaddaya know! It was indeed a Hosnian Prime landspeeder class pilot’s license, issued to Fa’nakhra Pentarra, eye color brown, height 5’2, weight…well, I’m not tellin’ you that.

“When’d you get this?” I asked, stunned.

“A few weeks ago,” she beamed. “I thought it would be a fun surprise. Are you surprised?”

“You betcha,” I laughed, handing the card back to her. “Lemme put my bag in the trunk.”

Fannie nodded, sliding her finger over the dash. The speeder’s hood popped open.

“Uh…no. It’s over there. That one—no, one over. No, Fan—”

Eventually she got it figured out, and my stuff was in the trunk, and I was in the passenger seat, and we were on our way home.

It was comforting to see the sights of Republic City again—the familiar buildings, the same stupid holoboards advertising treatments for male pattern baldness…but what I found was that I couldn’t stop staring at her. I’d seen her in hologram multiple times a week over the last few months, but here she was now, without the blue tint, and I was able to touch her. I reached out my hand and anchored it to her thigh (she took one hand off the steering to hold mine, but then we nearly swerved off the groundway, so I told her she wasn’t allowed to do that anymore), and I marveled at the solidity of her form under my fingers. She was real.

The other thing I found was that her being able to drive now was very, very hot. And that I have no explanation for. Observing her fingers on the controls, the way they curled around the handles, watching her use the blinker at the right times and check her mirrors—it got my heart pounding, and I felt so stupid.

It was always the weirdest things that got to me. She could get fully undressed and straddle me and I’d still be trying to explain hoopball scores to her, but other times she’d just be making caf or counting stitches or silently mouthing the words to a song, and bam—it was go-time all of a sudden. I guessed I just liked watching her when she was really focused on things, when she wasn’t aware of the world or of me, because there, in those quiet little moments, she was really just her—and that got me going more than anything.

I didn’t think she could tell (thank frick for jeans, because I needed that woman’s eyes on the road) but maybe she could, because after a minute she took my hand and slid it further up her lap, so that it nestled in the crook of her hip. She put her hand back on the steering controls and stared straight ahead, but there was an intensity to her stare that I recognized.

“…I liked those letters you wrote me,” she said after a while.

I knew what letters she was talking about.

You, unfortunately, don’t get to know.

“Yeah…I could tell,” I said, laughing softly. “You didn’t think they were too corny?”

“Even if they were, I liked them,” she said, then lowered her voice. “…I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you, too,” I said, then looked out the window. “And, uh—speaking of missing things, you just missed the exit.”

“Oh, I know where I’m going,” Fannie lilted mysteriously, and the way she said it made my face go hot.

She took us to the parking lot of what used to be a datatape store twenty years ago, which now turned into the Halloween store every year—but Halloween had come and gone, so there was no one here but us. She pulled into a space so cleanly it gave me the tingles, parked the speeder, and put up the tinted sunshades. She knew which button that was. It almost made me think she’d planned this.

Maybe she had.

She turned to me and gave me a Very Particular Look.

“Get in the back,” she said softly.

I stared at her like a tooka in the headlights.

Now—I’d said before I would never do it in a parking lot, and certainly not in the back of my mom’s speeder. But, under the current circumstances, these inhibitions were gone. She’d given me a direct order.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, unbuckling, and contorted my way between the front two seats and landed in the back.

Fannie followed shortly after, and settled on top of my lap. “I’m so happy you’re home,” she purred, combing her fingers through my hair. She planted a whisper of a kiss on my cheek—the first kiss exchanged since I’d returned planetside—and my blood pressure increased by about five-hundred percent.

“Me too,” I stammered.

“Did you miss me?” she asked in a low voice. Ohhh, man, she was untying the sash around her waist now. Her fingers trailed up to the hems of her robe at her collarbone, and off slipped the Jedi robe, and now she was down to her cotton chemise, which was by no means revealing (unless you counted her shoulders—which, to be fair, you rarely ever saw if you weren’t me), but even so I’d been basically conditioned to know what the revelation of her underclothes signified, however modest.

“Y-yeah,” I choked out, suddenly a lot less eloquent than I had been in all my letters.

“Good boy,” she said affectionately, and it was so over for me then. For whatever reason, I kind of liked when she took control and talked to me like that—I was extremely averse to and even paranoid about others’ attempts to control me in most situations, due in part to Certain Formative Events, but I trusted Fannie on a deeply intimate level in a way I trusted no one else—and so I liked it, I guess, letting her have that over me. It was my way of saying I felt safe with her.

And it was a good thing I did, because she wasted no time in diving in. Her lips found mine and her body pressed up against me, and my brain was promptly and utterly fried. Neurons were firing at a rate that they never had before, and I couldn’t even think, there was so much sensory input. I slid my hands up her back, under her chemise, and found her shoulderblades, and dragged my fingertips firmly down her skin as she gasped into my mouth.

“Oh, Ben…”

“You like that?” I asked slyly. (This, by the way, is basically the only sentence of dirty talk I have in my repertoire. You could probably catch me saying “you like that” twenty times in a single encounter. Also conveniently functions as a sexier way of asking “am I doing this right.”)

“Oh, yes,” she panted, and she liked it so much, she started treating me like I was the mechanical shaak at the mall, if you know what I mean. Which multiplied the overpowering sensations tenfold, and caused me to sweat and utter stupid sounds…but unfortunately, she only got about five or six bounces in before Disaster struck with a capital D, and it came quickly and unstoppably and without warning.

…Or, rather…I did.

Oh—crap.

Without any ability to stop it, like when you click on a holovid ad by accident, the fireworks over Endor/waterfall on Naboo/X-wing airshow montage suddenly played at about four times speed, and peaked, and ended, and then the “how would you rate this video?” message popped up and it was basically all over before it had even started.

I blinked, catching my breath as the horror settled into me, and then it was all draining away like water out of a bathtub and I really didn’t want her kissing me anymore or using me as her exercise ball. I felt smothered and uncomfortable and her movements were starting to hurt—especially through my jeans, which were not serving me anymore in this particular moment—but, as my panic rose, I found myself unable to move. I sat there, my entire body rigid (all except for one part, which was steadily declining in rigidity), and now I was overstimulated again, but the sensory bombardment was different now, and I was being eaten alive by shame and humiliation and disgust.

I didn’t know what to do. I felt awful and gross. I wanted to rip myself open and pull out my bowels like I was tearing wires out of a hyperdrive. I felt trapped under her weight and I couldn’t move and I forgot how to talk and it seemed like the only thing I could do was dissociate and wait for her to be done—only, I knew that wasn’t how it worked; I knew what it was she wanted—

And she knew what she wanted too. She gave me a goofy little smirk, which under alternate circumstances would’ve been obscenely adorable, and scooted back a little to unbutton my fly. She had her fingers on the zipper when I clapped my hand over hers to stop her.

“Fan, I-I can’t,” I said awkwardly, keeping her hand stationary and looking her in the eyes. “I—I’m done.”

She blinked, not understanding.

“But we just started,” she exclaimed with an incredulous smile.

“Well, I just finished,” I said bluntly, kinda hoping if I just said it, it’d be like ripping off a bandage.

Her smile slowly faded, replaced by a look that is probably the exact one you’d see if you snatched a big rainbow lollipop out of a child’s fingers.

“…Y-you mean..?” she faltered. “You mean you…already…?”

She didn’t need to finish her question, and I gave her a look so pathetic and so miserable, I didn’t need to give her an answer.

“…Already?” she repeated with a nervous laugh. “But…we…why…you’ve still got all your clothes on.”

“Well…I guess they’re staying on,” I said self-consciously.

Fannie looked absolutely crestfallen.

“S…sorry,” I stammered. “Although…I would like a change of underwear. So…if you could let me up to reach my suitcase…”

“Oh, so now it’s quite easy for you!” she burst out in exasperation, startling me as she abruptly rose and plopped down beside me. “All those times it was nearly impossible, but now—!” She looked like she was about to cry.

I stopped, unsure what to do. I tentatively reached out and put a hand on her bare shoulder. “Fan…”

But, as it turned out, she wasn’t about to cry. She was about to scream. She grabbed her crumpled robes and buried her face in them and shrieked a muffled shriek. (Not what you’re usually going for when you talk about making your wife scream.)

I was stunned. I’d never seen her do that before. It was like she was turning into me. She screamed into her robes again, then huffed and stared out the tinted window, and I stared into my lap and felt terrible.

i’m a failure

…For whatever reason, that thought feels about a million times worse when your pants are wet.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I sighed angrily and threw open the speeder door, storming out of the vehicle and slamming the door shut behind me. I limped stupidly out to the trunk and got what I needed to out of my suitcase, only now I had nowhere to change—I walked bow-legged back to the backseat door and threw it open again.

“Get out,” I muttered. “So I can change my clothes.”

“I see. Because you don’t want your wife to see you naked,” Fannie said haughtily.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Look, would you just get out?”

“What, looking like this?” Fannie shot back, gesturing to her chemise.

I rolled my eyes. “No, of course not. How long does it take to put your stupid bathrobe back on? Besides, you’re fine—I’ve seen sorority girls walkin’ around in less.”

“Oh? And is that all it takes for you, too?” she retorted nastily.

My mouth fell open.

“Fannie! What the—where’d you learn to talk like that?”

She stared at me defiantly.

…Oh, right. She’d learned it from me.

I glared at her. “Just get out,” I muttered.

She huffed again and pulled her robes back on and complied, leaving me alone in the backseat to shimmy my skinny jeans off over my sneakers and freshen up (not an easy feat when you’re 6’3 and in the back of a commuter). When I was done, I came back out to look for the laundry bag in my suitcase…and also found Fannie walking in circles around the parking lot.

“What’re you doing over there?” I asked gruffly.

“Trying to calm myself down,” she grumbled.

I wasn’t sure in what sense she meant it. Probably both.

I decided to let her be. I stuffed the dirty laundry into the bag and zipped my suitcase closed and slammed the trunk shut, and sat down with my back against the speeder, staring up at the sky.

…Man. I forgot this is what being married is like sometimes.

I dropped my head into my knees.

A few minutes later, Fannie returned and sat down next to me. I raised my head. She didn’t look so mad anymore.

She cleared her throat.

“…I’m sorry for getting angry, dear,” she said, sounding remorseful. “I lost my temper, and I was unkind. I should not have spoken to you so cruelly.”

“S’okay,” I replied quietly. “I’ve heard worse.”

“I was just…very frustrated,” she said. (I wasn’t sure in what sense she meant it. Probably both.) “I…I’d been thinking about this for a while, and very much looking forward to it. I was so excited to surprise you by picking you up at the spaceport, and…well…excited about other things.”

“I know,” I told her softly.

“I was being selfish,” she admitted. “It’s…it’s not as if you’re a toy to play with. You’re a person, a whole person, and I am bound to love you in the whole.”

“Yeah…sorry I couldn’t love you in the hole.”

I got slapped for that one, as I rightly deserved.

“Sorry.”

“Goodness, Ben, you can be so filthy sometimes.”

“Thanks.”

“Oh, hush.”

I looked at her for a second, then reached over and patted her arm. “No, but…I really am sorry, Fan,” I said quietly. “I feel…really bad.”

“It’s not your fault,” she said. “You didn’t do anything.”

“We didn’t get to do anything.”

“We’ll have more opportunities,” she said, sounding like she was trying to encourage herself as much as me.

“Yeah...for two weeks out of the month,” I said. “Whenever my family’s not home.”

Fannie paused. She knew I was right.

“…Well, this isn’t what’s important,” she said at last.

“It’s important to you,” I said. “And, I mean…it’s important to me, too. I’d like to be able to share this with you, and have it bring us closer together instead of it always being a source of conflict. I really would.”

Fannie sighed. “…It always seems so easy in those books,” she murmured.

I almost laughed.

“In what books?” I asked. “What’ve you been reading, Fan?” Gee whiz, maybe these three months without me had been even harder on her than I’d thought. Fannie blanched, and then she blushed, but she didn’t answer…which was highly incriminating.

I broke into a huge grin. “Fannie Pentarra! You’ve been reading smut.”

“Romance novels!” she cried. “And I only read ones where they’re married. And I skip all the intimate scenes.”

Then I really did laugh.

“B-but you can still read around them,” she insisted defensively, “which I do, a-and…what I meant was—my point was—no one ever seems to have any problems with it, in those stories.”

I snickered, unable to stop being tickled by the idea of my wife reading erotica and nibbling around it like a vegan eating a hamburger. Fannie reddened even more and smacked me, and I laughed again, putting up my hands to defend myself.

“Okay, okay, I believe ya, sweetheart—chill,” I said, still grinning. “But…of course they don’t have any problems like that in those books. All that drivel’s just wish fulfillment. But this is real life, and we’re real people, and we have real problems.”

I paused, looking down, then tucked my hand into hers.

“But…” I said slowly, “…I guess the benefit is that…while all that stuff is made-up…you and I get to be real.”

Fannie looked up at the sky, and leaned her head upon my shoulder.

“Yes,” she murmured. “You and I are real.”

“And…well…all that that entails, I guess,” I said.

“I suppose so,” she agreed.

We sat in silence, listening to the sounds of the landspeeder lanes above.

“…I’m glad you’re real, Ben,” she said, after a while.

I squeezed her hand.

“I am very glad you’re real, Fannie.”

We held hands and gazed at the sky together, sitting there against the speeder in the abandoned parking lot of the old datatape store: very real, and very married. I turned to look at her, and saw the ring on her left hand, and my stupid crappy friendship bracelet tied around her wrist.

I laid a kiss on the top of her head.

Amalia was Luke’s first Jedi student, and she had a hard time adjusting as he took on more students. Luke was the only parental figure in Amalia’s life (her mom was mentally ill and sold her to Luke when they were living on the streets of Coruscant, we don’t really know about her dad). So Amalia was really attached to Luke as a father figure, and had a hard time getting along with the other students, except for Fannie, because Fannie is willing to be friends with anyone.

Amalia was mean to Ben when he first showed up. Part of it was that’s just how she was back then, part of it was she was maybe jealous since she had that attachment to Luke, and Ben is Luke’s actual nephew. Amalia and Ben hated each other at first. But after some conflict that I do not remember the details of, Ben and Amalia eventually made up, and became close friends after realizing how similar they were to one another. They even realized they had matching stuffed bantha plushes that Luke had given each of them.

Also there was some plot element somewhere where Amalia was like, maybe kind of attracted to Ben or something, but I myself do not actually understand that, so lately I’ve just been ignoring it.

Fannie, Amalia, and Ben became a little friend group. Sort of along with Fannie’s Jedi school boyfriend Deirak, who REALLY is a cryptid (even I know very little about him).

When Ben was 18 and Amalia was 20, Amalia decided to leave the Jedi school (and leave behind her identity as a Jedi). She was going to go back to Coruscant (with…no money), but the Solos let her stay with them. She lived there for a couple years and worked some unknown job that I do not know until she couldn’t stand living there anymore (she felt like a burden) and she saved up to buy a repulsortruck on Coruscant and moved there and lived out of her truck.

Amalia’s mental health was so bad it was in the ground basically the entire time up to this point. Ben’s low point was when he was 17, and as he started to heal, even he kinda eclipsed her in terms of mental wellbeing eventually. But the two supported each other a lot, and found a lot of comfort in the fact that they both understand what those deep struggles are like.

Amalia has had some hashtag Issues with maladaptive coping. Eventually she hit her low point and crashed her truck into some old lady’s fence while drunk. Not only did the old lady not press charges, she took Amalia in almost as a daughter, and introduced Amalia to her chur—I mean spiritual community of non-Force sensitives who follow the Force even though they have no ability to wield its powers. And Amalia really started to get better from that point on.

Ben kept in touch with Amalia after Jedi school, through his time in college, as much as Ben is capable of keeping in touch. Fannie was actually the one he lost contact with. But Ben and Fannie eventually met back up again, and once they started dating, Ben’s friendship with Amalia kind of went on the backburner, which Amalia was not happy about, and told him so. Ben eventually got better about this, and he and Amalia are close again now.

Amalia has never been super pro-Bannie, but she’s a live-and-let-live type of person and a loyal friend to Ben, and if they can pull it off, she’ll stand behind them. She’s also fully prepared to support them through divorce lol, though she’d probably stick with Ben more than Fannie. Amalia and Fannie haven’t been quite as close since Amalia renounced the Jedi. Both Amalia and Fannie have some complicated feelings toward each other, related to their history at the school together and their now-differing views on the Force.

Last year, the old lady Amalia lived with passed away, and left her estate to Amalia. So she’s been fixing up the house lately and trying to figure out what she wants to do now.

Personality-wise, Amalia is gruff and blunt and says what she’s thinking, which means she often comes off sort of rude. She’s sort of closed-off, or at least she seems that way, but she’s willing to go deep with people she trusts. Like Fannie, she is driven by a strong sense of truth and justice, but she comes at it from somewhat of a different angle. She’s kind of a hippie in some ways. Fun fact: she is vegan. I myself forgot this about her. I just thought it would be funny if a Togruta was a vegan. Right now she’s in her boring 30yo era (she’s 27, but it’s close) and she’s really into the mundane. Her birthday was last May and she was super excited to get a blender she could use to make her own frozen yogurt.